Dear all,
It has come to my attention that my last posting has probably insulted
hundreds of statisticians worldwide. I had intended to make clear that a
statistician taking this postdoc would have considerable autonomy to pursue
questions within the broad framework of the CCRB's research. In my head, I
was thinking to contrast advanced statistical modelling with the kind of
very rudimentary (and usually extremely repetitive) statistical advice that
I often find myself dispensing on campus. I realize that professional
statistical consultants, like all professional statisticians, engage in
advanced statistical modelling. Indeed, an applicant with a strong
consulting background in potentially relevant areas (e.g., spatial stats,
hierarchical Bayes) could well be ideal for one of these positions. I
really did not mean to intimate that professional statistical consulting
does not demand broad and creative thinking; rather, I meant to intimate
that the kinds of drop-in consultations in which I often find myself (which
usually involve saying the same thing over and over again to different
people) do not require broad and creative thinking.
Re-reading my posting, I cannot imagine how I failed to realize how
insulting my paragraph would be to someone whose professional work was
consulting. This failure was truly thoughtless, and I apologize. My shame
is compounded by the realization that I have previously received valuable
help from professional consultants on statistical issues than were beyond
my abilities-- in this forum and elsewhere.
Very, very, very sorry,
Sean
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Sean R. Connolly, PhD
Department of Marine Biology
James Cook University
Townsville, QLD 4811
AUSTRALIA
Ph: 61 7 4781 4242
Fax: 61 7 4725 1570
http://www.jcu.edu.au/school/mbiolaq/mbiol/staff/sconnolly.html#SConnolly
VISIT THE NEW CENTRE FOR CORAL REEF BIODIVERSITY
at http://www.jcu.edu.au/school/mbiolaq/ccrbio/
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"We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers-- thieves
planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the
colonizers of dreams." -- Peter Beagle
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